Alexandre Kojève, Philosopher-Bureaucrat; Nordics vs. Nazis; Judgments of Nuremberg
Reading Watching 02.01.26
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When the Clock Broke is now out in paperback and available wherever books are sold. If you live in the UK, it’s also available there. The UK edition is also apparently available all over the world, too! I’ve received reports now of book sightings in places as far as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Christchurch, New Zealand. It seems relatively easy to find in Commonwealth countries and at English-language bookstores abroad.
I’ve been really excited by all the interest in POLYBIUS, the Authoritarian Consolidation Index, which I mocked up. Quite a few people have already volunteered to collaborate on the project, and we now have a Discord server for that purpose. Reader cf. Luke has kindly volunteered to be the development lead. We have many people with backgrounds in computer science and software engineering, but we still need more social scientists and historians. Or just anybody with ideas, for that matter!
I recently read Boris Groys’s Alexandre Kojève: An Intellectual Biography. Kojève was a Hegelian philosopher whose lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit influenced everyone from Sartre to Fukuyama. He was also a senior French civil servant specializing in trade. Suffice it to say, he was a fascinating and peculiar character. Rather than summarize the book myself, I leave you in the capable hands of Jonathan Ree in the London Review of Books, where he reviews it alongside The Life and Thought of Alexandre Kojève by Marco Filoni:
The obituary in Le Monde was unequivocal: the death of Alexandre Kojève on 4 June 1968 had deprived France of one of its greatest civil servants. Kojève had worked at the Ministry of Economy and Finance for more than twenty years, overseeing Marshall Aid, nurturing the European Economic Community and brokering the Kennedy round of tariff agreements, and he died in harness, at the age of 66, after addressing a committee of the Economic Community in Brussels. But he was not a typical French mandarin. He was Russian by birth and went on to study philosophy and religion in Germany in the 1920s, without bothering to take a degree. He then moved to Paris, but never attended a French university, let alone one of the grandes écoles, and he was already in his forties when he entered government service.
It happened almost by accident, in the wake of the war, when the French state was busy reinventing itself. Kojève was short of money, and a friend wangled him a temporary job as an interpreter at the Directorate of Foreign Economic Relations. He soon made himself indispensable not only for his linguistic skills, which were prodigious, but also for his far-sighted advice – astute, if unsolicited – on the conduct of negotiations. He did not conceal his political opinions: he was, he said, a ‘classical Stalinist’ and a ‘right-wing Marxist’ and he believed that the epoch of autonomous nation-states was coming to an end; but as a civil servant he was willing to promote the long-term interests of France, as he saw them. Within a year he was given a permanent post, with a secretary and an office of his own, and was left to operate as he chose. His preferred method was to sit in on meetings, listen unobtrusively, then write an analysis of what was at stake and assemble a few sharp words to dispatch – as his obituarist put it – the ‘absurdities of his opponents’. He conducted himself, in short, like an old-world ‘privy counsellor’ rather than a modern ‘expert, laden with files’ and his position was ‘completely unique’.
The journalist Gilles Lapouge, interviewing Kojève early in 1968, was impressed by his ‘elegance’ and ‘ease’. Kojève told him he ‘adored’ international negotiations, but did not take them too seriously: for him they were essentially a ‘superior game’, which he played ‘like the devil in holy water’. In the opinion of the diplomat Olivier Wormser, he was one of the visionary architects of European unity and his briefing notes on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade were ‘brilliant’ and ‘profound’. Raymond Barre, a future prime minister, remembered him as ‘ironic’ and ‘sarcastic’, and skilled in ‘presenting arguments that pitched everyone else into chaos’, especially the British. The Canadian negotiator Rodney Grey recalled chairing a meeting in Geneva when Kojève slipped in at the back. At a pause in proceedings, Kojève showed him the latest edition of the Herald Tribune, which reported that France was about to propose a new mechanism for levelling tariffs. ‘I asked Kojève if this was France’s policy,’ Grey recalled. ‘“No,” he replied, “but it will be soon.”’ By the time the meeting resumed, the delegates had read the article and the new measures were adopted without a hitch. Raymond Van Phan Phi, who was part of the French team, realised he had been outplayed: Kojève was, as usual, flouting the ‘arguments and instructions’ of the ministry, but he had ‘arguments and instructions of his own’, which ‘were of course approved by his superiors, but only afterwards’.
Isn’t it interesting that the regime is throwing its weight simultaneously at two Nordic social democracies: Denmark and Minnesota? Think tank thug Christopher Rufo is disappointed with the type of white people up there in Minnesota—apparently, they are too virtuous. Here’s a passage he wrote recently:
What explains why endemic disorder seems to plague Minneapolis? My pet theory is that if you look at the history of Minneapolis and compare it to the histories of other American cities that have similarly become hotbeds of left-wing radicalism and anarchy-say, Seattle-there are real commonalities. Both cities have a long history of powerful organized labor movements, factions of communist sympathizers, and a tradition of industrial-frontier progressivism. Each city also has a high density of Scandinavians. There’s something about Scandinavian transplant cultures that simultaneously brings an over-empathizing element—bring in as many Somalis as you can, don’t ask any rude questions about what they might be up to-and also a more militant, socialistic, progressive, and activist element.
Leaving aside for a moment Rufo’s obsessive bigotry against Somalis, the armchair sociology is…kinda correct. But to me, that all just sounds great. What struck me about Rufo’s lament, though, is how similar it sounds to the issues the original Nazis had with their Scandinavian neighbors to the North. Although Nazi racial ideology fetishized the “Nordic race,” most of the Nordics had very little time for the Nazis. Here’s a Foreign Affairs article from 1937 by a German exile on the difficulties the Third Reich was having making inroads among Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes:
Actually it is fantastic to think that the “Nordic” dream world of the Nazis ever could coincide with the true Nordic conception of life. Scandinavians are individualists to the core, democrats by millenary tradition. As early as the year 1000 a French chronicler was already relating a characteristic episode. A horde of Vikings who had gone ashore in France were questioned by the local bailiff, “Who is your king?” The Vikings replied: “We have no king, we are all equally good.”
True, the descendants of these proud Vikings have now been ruled by kings for many centuries, and they are among the most monarchic peoples in the world. Yet the old Viking spirit is still alive. Scandinavians are all equally good, and if they have kings now it is because these learned in good season not to be despots. What a world of difference there is between the broadly individualistic and fundamentally democratic outlook of the truly Nordic nations and the Führer-Prinzip,” the “Kadaver-Gehorsam,” of the authoritarian, totalitarian Third Reich! Better than any thing else, this one single fact indicates to a Scandinavian that Germany is being ruled not by Nordic but by Oriental principles.
“I want to declare categorically that the Nazi system has nothing whatever in common with Nordic mentality,” exclaimed, in June 1935, the Rector of Copenhagen University, Professor Joestrup. And jubilant applause echoed back from the 1,400 students he was addressing. “It may sound quite absurd to Southern thinking,” he also said, “but it is a fact, that the Vikings never felt themselves a will-less mass, but always a commonwealth of free men. That is the Nordic spirit. Russia and Germany are now in absolute opposition to the Nordic ideal of society; for they both have reduced man to a mere cog in the state machinery, suppressing all personal freedom.” In such terms as those, again and again, the intellectual and political leaders of Scandinavia, supported by an almost unanimous opinion, have made it clear that they will not accept the idea of any “Nordic” system in which Germany sets the pace and sounds the ley.
This did not dissuade Nazi designs on their fairer cousins:
But the Nazi suitor is dauntless. “It is an open secret that we Germans nourish towards the North a strong affection which so far has not awakened there an equally strong love for us. . . .But we are as a nation powerful enough to be able to wait for this response to our love, which is bound to come some day? we are convinced of that!” In these not quite unambiguous terms, the Schleswig-Holsteinsche Landeszeitung, official and most important Nazi organ in Germany’s northernmost province, gave an outline in November 1936 of German feelings and aspirations with regard to Scandinavia. In other words, the Nazis are well aware that the genuine “Nordics” are very reluctant to accept their leadership. But for reasons much more of a political and economic than of a romantic character, Berlin is set on bringing the Northern countries into her orbit. To achieve this end one may safely expect her to go to any lengths of persuasion, cajolery, intimidation, and, in the last resort, violence. “Und bist du nicht willig ? so brauch’ ich Gewalt.” [“And if you’re not willing? Then I will use violence” The line is from Goethe’s Erlkönig. -JG] That is the essence of Nazi courtship in Scandinavia as it is in other parts of the world.
I don’t want to exaggerate Nordic resistance to German rule or indulge in ethnic essentialism, no matter how superficially satisfying it may be. After all, the author Knut Hamsun was an enthusiastic Nazi, and the name of Norwegian collaborator Vidkun Quisling now provides a synonym for the word “traitor.” But both the Danes and Norwegians resisted Nazi occupation bravely. The civil disobedience campaigns of Denmark are particularly famous. Even if some of the famous stories are apocryphal, it’s the only nation in Europe that rescued the vast proponderance of its Jewish population. Nazi occupiers were at a loss that these specimens of “Aryan perfection” regarded them as evil creeps. I guess some of that spirit is still alive. Sorry, Rufo! Say, where is that last name from anyway?
